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Windows 7 Won't boot

This is a ****ing Nightmare... My Wife was using Her Computer earlier, and was simply playing a game. She said that a Windows Update popped up in the bottom right corner of the screen as it has a million times before, and that two minutes later, the machine's Screen went Blue.

I thought BSOD, but She said this one was different. She said that it was a very short Hex Code compared to normal, without info, and then, once rebooted, it started up like normal, and then, when it got passed the Motherboard's screen to get to BIOS and so on, it shows a Black Screen that says "Windows is loading Files" and then you get to the Recovery screen.

You can't apparently get to a Desktop no matter what, and it says it's trying to fix the Computer, but it can't. It just does this over and over and over again. No matter how many things I've tried, it's the SAME thing, and it's seriously driving me crazy at this point.

Normally I'd just say **** it and reinstall Windows fresh and be done with it, however, there is stuff on that Hard Drive we CAN'T lose.

My Wife had gotten some VERY important Data on the Computer, and because of everything that has been going on, we couldn't make a back up yet. So, there is VERY important Data on the drive we need to get to, or somehow get the Data onto my FTP Server, or another External HD, anything, so that the OS can be reinstalled finally.

I've been googling and reading for HOURS at this point, and I've found plenty of posts from others about this issue, and yet to find something that will work.

That is one of the hundreds of forums I've found with people who've had this problem.

If I look at the little "log" when it fails to repair Windows, it was saying "StartUpRepairOffline " and basically, if you put the Windows 7 Recovery CD the Computer came with in and boot from that, I can't seem to do anything except load the same Recovery Console that loads when you reboot the machine anyway.

When you press the Power Button to turn it on, it will start up, and once you get passed the spot where you can go into BIOS, where normally it would start loading Windows, it instead says that Windows is loading Files, then you see the screen of Windows loading, and it drops you straight to a Recovery Console.

I've tried Restore Points. So far, 14 times. The Restore does NOT work, and even though it says "All System Files have been reverted back to the way they were on this date" once I reboot, it goes RIGHT back to that ****ing Recovery Console.

I'm currently looking for a Bootable CD I can burn that will let me make an Archive of everything on the Hard Drive, and then, use an FTP Client that will let me upload everything to another machine so I'll at least have the Data needed. There's a LOT of Data we need off that machine, and so basically I have to figure out a way to do that.

My Wife was also thinking of trying to find a Bootable CD that would shrink the Hard Drive's Partitions, make a new one, move the Data to that, and then Reinstall Windows 7, and then grab everything from the Partition, but I'm thinking if there's a Rescue CD, or something, that will let me make an Archive of all the Data I need, and then, have an FTP Client, I can just boot from the CD, make the archives, and upload them over FTP to my Server, and then reinstall Windows, and once that's done, grab everything.

God this is a Nightmare...... Has ANYONE ever seen this fixed before? I found one web site for Windows 7 that said to open the Command Prompt, make some back ups of the Registry, and then copy them over and that would work, but once I did it, it just continued doing this.

So that didn't work at all. Using Windows Restore, doesn't work either.

The thing that's REALLY pissing me off other than how this seems almost impossible to fix, is that every time I see someone talking about it, and that they are having the same problem, they all say it started after a Windows Update Popped up on the bottom right of the screen.

I also saw a few people say that it's actually caused by something from that update. I don't have a link or any form of knowing if that's accurate, but it seems that EVERY forum I've looked though for answers says that it starts from this Windows Update. If so, I can't understand how Microsoft would fix this. You can't use FTP from the Command Prompt or Id' have uploaded everything by now, and there seems to be no Network connection with the Command Prompt, so other than bootable CDs with a patch, I don't even know how they would fix this.

Anyway, like I said, the message says "StartUpRepairOffline" and if you google that, you'll get a BUNCH of results, mostly from forums, and you'll see a BUNCH of people saying "Try this" and "Well if that didn't work, try this" and you'll see the person who made the thread replying over and over again that none of it works.

I'd seriously appreciate if anyone knows how to fix this problem.... As I said, there is some VERY important stuff on that drive, so I have to somehow get the Data, and just wow is this driving me crazy.

So far I haven't found a way to fix it, so also, if you know of any good Bootable CDs that have a way to read the NTFS Partitions on the machine, and would allow me to make an Archive of the Data on it, and ALSO contain an FTP Client I could use to upload everything, that would help some too.

I haven't tried that yet, but looking at it, I'm not sure about it. I have not slept much, and mentally I'm drained from this. But anyway, again, if anyone knows a way to fix this, or a good bootable CD that will let me make some Archives so I can get the Data from the drive, that would be nice.

Safemode doesn't work either. My first thought was "OK, I'll boot safemode, try to fix it, and go from there" but then, I realized the extent of the horror that is....Well, whatever it's called.

I literally spent two full hours on Google reading posts and articles about this problem, and I still haven't found a fix for it, or much of anything where someone has managed to do anything other than reinstall.

It's weird to me... I haven't EVER come across a software issue no one could fix, I mean, it's software. I admit that there's been a few times where I'd get pissed off at a Windows problem and format and reinstall, but those times, it was just faster than the fix. But this one.... I don't get it.

I've kept going on my quest, and now it's been 4 and a half hours, and so far, what I've found is this:

The issue seems to happen because of a Windows Update. Which I find to be weird because I know they DO do a QA on these things.... But every time I've read about someone who had this problem, it was right after a Windows Update popped up. And, usually within minutes of it happening.

The issue basically creates a situation where you can't get Windows to boot at all. It will literally just sit there and load the Recovery Console over and over and over again.

I saw ONE person say "That fixed it!" but when someone else who had it happen asked them to reply with what they did to get it to work again, they never replied. So I don't know what that magic fix was.

The Windows Recovery Console that loads, can't fix the problem. It can't even find it.... It says that it couldn't find any problems and to contact your system admin...

I found the one article that said when it happened, you had to fix the registry by hand, and then gave step by step instructions. I didn't see anyone saying that helped them, and when I did it, I did it exactly as told, but it didn't fix it. It worked, and I copied over the required files, and did exactly what I was supposed to do, but, it didn't work.

If that works as it's supposed to, I should be able to make archives of the Data I need, and then use the FTP client it has to upload the Data to my FTP Server.

The reason I haven't simply hooked it up as a Slave, is that the Computer is brand new, and it's the only one we have access to that uses SATA. So I can't actually do that sadly. A lot of my machines are pretty old and that's the newest machine we have. So I can't really just pop the drive into something else and grab everything from it. Which sucks because that would probably take all of an hour to do too...

So basically, I'm going to burn the Rescue CD I linked to, and Hope to God that it actually works. It says it has a bunch of tools for Windows and Linux, and that it has tools for Partitions as well, and also a bunch of Compression and Archiving tools, and it has Networking, so, it should allow me to grab all the Data I need to keep, and then make Archives of it all, and then upload those to my Server, and from there, download them onto this machine which has the biggest HD, and delete the one from the Server so I can upload another. The reason for that, is that the HD is 500 GBs, and I don't have that much space in my Server. It's something I put together with the 43 GB HD the machine came with, and the 110 GB drive I installed, so I'll probably be working on this a while.

The Operating System, is Windows 7 Home Premium, and I don't think Service Pack 1 is installed.

Thanks for replying. This has been driving me nuts as I said. Would be nice if we'd been able to actually make some back ups, because I'd have just formated the ****er and reinstalled Windows, but sadly, there's a lot of stuff on there, and none of it was backed up.

Anyway, if anyone finds anything or knows anything, feel free to respond. I still have no idea how a Microsoft Update Notification could cause all this, and I've been looking for over 4 hours now.

By the way; I saw a few people saying on some of those forums that if the Windows DVD was damaged it wouldn't work, and to always check with a bootable CD to rule that out, and I did that as well.

I popped in Disk 1 of Slackware 13.37 and it booted right up just fine. So I know that not only is the Microsoft DVD working fine, but that the DVD drive allows you to boot from it just fine too.

The link I saw was here, and I don't know how this worked out. Hardware has not ever been my strong point, but I do have a basic understanding of Hardware....Well, enough to get by most of the time anyway. I don't build my own Computers or anything. Operating Systems was always my thing, but GOD I Hate Hardware sometimes.

This is the post I saw where someone actually said they got it working again:

He didn't ever reply to say which thing worked right and considering that this machine is literally Brand New, and only a few months old, and isn't really used for number crunching, I really don't think the HD is going already. And I did check to see how the HD sounds, and that sounded normal, and disk Operations weren't "weird" or anything, and according to the scan I ran, it's supposed to be working fine. And I kind of assumed that if the DVD drive was the issue, it wouldn't allow me to boot from it with two different OSs.

It seems to have quite a bit of tools I could use. My Plan is to basically pop that in, boot from that, and once I have it running, make an Archive of the stuff I need, and then start uploading it.

I'll probably make a few Archives, because the size of the stuff I need to grab is pretty big, so I'm thinking it'll be a lot easier, and I won't risk filling any HDs up, if I just make more than one, and then label them based on what is there.

Once I have the Archives made, I can start uploading them, as it says it comes with an FTP Client, so I can use that to upload Archives of back ups to my Server, and then from there, I can use this machine, to grab the Archive, and once it's on here, delete it from the Server so I'll have enough space to keep uploading new ones.

I logged into my Server and made some space ready, but unless I want to delete everything I have, which still wouldn't probably be enough space, I'll have to do it this way.

So I'm going to get ready to boot the CD, and see if I can FINALLY grab the Data from the drive, and upload it to the FTP Server, and then grab it on this machine which has a bigger drive, and then, once I have all the Archives, I was thinking of using Gparted anyway to shrink the Partition and make a new one anyway, because then I can put Data on a different Partition, and then do a Format and fresh install of Windows 7 on the Computer.

I Hope to God this works and doesn't take 5 hours. I just can't Believe it all seems to happen from a Windows Update though. If you google the error I posted about, basically, you get a bunch of Forum Posts about it, and then a few articles here and there that talk about it, and all of them seem to say that there is a Windows Update that pops up, and then this happens.

I don't quite understand that at all, I mean, how would a Windows Update pop up on the screen totally screw a machine like that? I haven't ever even heard of this before.

I can't even verify what update it was, or, if that's the true cause, but out of all those posts, it was the only thing that happened that the other people said happened right before this started.

It's weird, and I hate it. I just want the Computer working again with all the Data back on it.

Yup, sure does. Would have been nice if there had been one. Then I could have googled that error to see if there was something else I could do.

I wasn't in the room when it happened, but my Wife has two degrees in Computer Science, is better with Hardware than I am by far, a WAY better coder, knows Assembler, and I dare say probably better with Unix too. She's been using Unix longer than I have, and She's very intelligent.

When I asked just to be sure about the screen, She said that it looked like a BSOD, except, as She said; "You know how a Blue Screen normally has a bunch of text on it with an error message and some other info?" And I said yes, and She said "This one didn't".... She had run a Virus Scan literally like 12 hours earlier, and wasn't doing anything other than playing a game, and then, She saw a Windows Update pop up in the lower right side of the screen.

Two Minutes later, the machines crashes, She reboots, and it looks different from a usual boot; She can see it's saying "Windows is loading files" on a black screen, and then, it goes straight to the Recovery Console, and says it's checking for errors.

It then says it can't find any errors, and basically, you can either click on the advanced menu, or, you can reboot. Rebooting simply starts this process over again, as it doesn't ever seem to stop, and, the advanced menu, is basically where you have about 5 options. The first one, is the one that fails when this starts up, and then you have Restore stuff, which also won't work at all. I know, I've tried restoring to different points 14 times now, and not once did it work.

Then you have the Memory Test, and not much else other than a command prompt.

The Command Prompt starts out with an "X:" menu, and from there you can change to the C and D drives and all that, but, you can't get to Windows, and there isn't any Network. Which blows, because it would have made this a lot easier.